News | selophane.blog

Article: As seen at the Apple Store …

The New York Times ran an article about an architect who used a glass stair in his home to open it up and create more light. Glass stairs are nothing new to commercial architecture – they’ve been around for many years before Apple* built one in their iconic SoHo store in NYC, but they are relatively new in residential construction. Part of the reason for this is that the structural components for a glass stair like the one in the article (a concealed steel structure) are not commonly used in American stick frame architecture. Wooden stairs, though much less transparent, are less expensive, and thus tend to be the the de-facto choice, even under skylights.

The thing that i find interesting about this article is the introduction of typically commercial elements (glass and steel) into a victorian townhouse. I noticed that the article makes no mention of the historic preservation / adaptive reuse element of this story, nor does it question the merits of completely transforming a house of this age in this manner. I’m not saying that i think it was the wrong move (i don’t know the full scope of the architecture) but from the accompanying images it seems as if the remodeling has thoroughly removed any traces of the house’s former life. Such a drastic move as this always makes me wonder if there was a more subtle way of adapting a house such as this to the needs of the occupants?

* – It should be noted that Apple’s iconic stair is a self supporting glass stair – there are no hidden steel support stringers, the glass is supported by a glass wall below.

She’ll be riding on the Metro when she lands …

Today The Washington Post reported that the rumors of the demise of the Dulles Metro Extension were greatly exaggerated. Of course, this does not mean that the funding is free and clear, it just means that the project has not been scrapped and it will continue, with certain requirements to be met.

For those unfamiliar, this project is a rail extension for the WMATA run METRO’s Orange Line. The new line would run out to Dulles Airport, the main international terminal for DC, which is currently only reachable by Bus, taxi, or personal vehicles. This extension would also service the towns between the end of the orange line and the Dulles Airport, a heavily developed stretch of land that currently has very heavy commute times into and out from the city.

This is some of the best news for Northern Virginia and the DC metro area in a long while. There has been rampant speculation in the housing and development markets in regards to locations of future metro stations; this was all in great danger of collapsing after some recent articles warning of the possible death of the project due to federal oversight and fears of a bloated budget. If the speculation did not pan out, this could have triggered another horrible fall in the local housing markets, and could have meant many more foreclosures. Also, the extension will provide greater rail access farther west from the city than is currently available and may help alleviate some of the beltway and commuter traffic. If this project is successful it will bring with it hope that commuter rail solutions to traffic in Northern Virginia could be a reality and that the fable purple line (a ring line around the city) might one day be constructed.

Article: A bicycle built for exclusion?

The SmartBikeDC System

[Image via SmartBike DC]

This past Sunday, The New York Times ran an article about bike sharing coming to DC (as did The Washington Post and The Associated Press.) I find it interesting that I had, not 4 days sooner, blogged about the Parisian and Viennese bicycle sharing programs.

The program, named SmartBike DC, is only currently going to be implemented in the North West of the District; the article mentions that there will only be 120 bikes and 10 stations in the system, but that it is hoped that it will grow to over a 1000. I applaud this move by the district and its partnering with clear channel which has made this a possibility. More government services should look to this as a test of private sponsorship as an alternative to privatization. In addition, I hope more bikes and racks are swiftly forthcoming, the more capacity this system has the greater the ridership and impact it will have.

Unfortunately, I worry that the system is not in place for those who could use it the most, the residents of NE and SE, many of whom are WAMTA bound and to whom $40 a year unlimited use rental fee will be much more reasonable than the $40 weekly Metro passes or the $11 weekly ($44 monthly) unlimited bus passes. In addition, besides the Shaw neighborhood and the Reeves Center (which is close but not in the heart of the columbia heights gentrification), none of the other 8 bike locations are in non-gentrified non-majority white neighborhoods. Furthermore, of the few images of people that are present on the website, none seem to represent people of color. To me this seems to reek of a further separation of transportation methods amongst the district residents. White middle and upper class people in NW will now take cabs, the metro, and bikes, while the working poor in NE and SE will be forced to rely on the same failing bus system that they have in the past. This makes me wonder if this whole endeavor is in some way an attempt to kowtow to environmental pressure from the middle and upper classes and not a means of democratizing transportation.

Article: Gehry goes Geometric!

The exterior of the lewis library

[Image via Princeton University]

Frank O. Gehry‘s new building at Princeton University – the Lewis Library – is nearing completion. Princeton’s website has an article describing the new building and giving us a sneak peak inside.

[Image via Princeton University]

I hate to prejudge this building, but from the pictures, I worry that this is going to be even worse of an occupant experience than MIT’s Stata Center. The bright contrasting colors of the interior and the sharp dramatic angles seem to go one step beyond the Stata, which looked like it was falling down, instead, the exterior of the Lewis Library looks like a jumble of child’s block swept under a rug and the inside looks like something from a medieval view of hell. In addition, from what we can see in the photographs and what has been installed already, there seems to be a lot of hard surfaces with little acoustic dampening (a problem at the Stata as well). The article makes the claim that the third and fourth floors of the building’s tower will be the quietest places on campus, but i have to wonder about the rest of the building. As far as the exterior goes, it seems to be a natural progression in Gehry’s work. The obvious influences are the Stata center and the disney concert hall as well, but there are more subtle influences here as well. I can see shades of Chiat Day in the volumetric massing and even some of his Gehry house in Santa Monica in the delaminating of the skin from the building and subverting of building conventions.

The thing that I find the most compelling is that when taken as a series this building, Bilbao, the Stata Center, and the Disney Concert hall you can see the progression of how GehryPartners designs – they create volumes and then wrap them in a skin. Bilbao and Disney are both skin-type buildings, Stata is a volume building. The Lewis Library is the closest thing to a hybrid showing both volumes of program and a steel wrapped skin. In two years, after this building has been open and inhabited for a while and has had its due in the architectural magazines we will see what the verdict is n this building.

Article: Un velo a day keeps the traffic away.

A Bike Station in Paris

[image via anArchitecture via AP]

Horns honking, cabbies swearing, streets filled with a slow moving mass of metal particles, pedestrians choking on exhaust fumes: Traffic. Nothing says Urban center like a heaping helping of fossil fuel consumption, or does it? Paris and Vienna have both rolled out free short term bicycle rentals (albeit at different scales) as a social experiment and attempt to reduce reliance on automobiles and ease traffic within the urban centers of these two European Cities (read about it here).

This is something that could work in the Old Growth Cities along the eastern seaboard of the US, as long as it is kept free for short term rides and deployed in massive numbers (like Paris). If you coupled this with a good commuter rail system this could make up for a non-extensive subway system: it would be a method of getting people from the rail terminus to their destinations. I can see this working like the zip car phenomenon, but in reverse. Instead of renting one on those rare occasions where you need to drive out of town, people could rent bikes daily (if there was enough of a supply) to go to and from work and the store. Of course this would not help commuters from the suburbs, but since it could alleviate casual car use amongst residents it would reduce some of the daily traffic. I could imagine NY, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and DC all benefitting greatly from this kind of program.

Article: New Urbanism, is it old hat?

Whether you know it by name or not, most of America has at one time or another come into contact with New Urbanism. This anti-modernist anti-sprawl post-modern offshoot which has been with us for almost 30 years, since the development of Seaside, Florida in 1980 held a conference in Old Town Alexandria, VA. If you understood the nature of New Urbanism, the fact that their conference was being held in one of the oldest downtowns in virginia is quite the irony.

New Urbanism stands for the creation of artificial suburban (and sometimes urban) downtowns and mixed use communities, something, which like the path to hell, is paved with good intentions. The problem I have always had with the New Urbanist movement is its non-organic nature. Communities get branded before they are built; house styles and strict zoning rules are pre-planned and approved by designers preventing any straying from the ideal image from entering the perfect new (sub)urban town. They also stand in direct opposition to Modernism; instead of drawing on both the strengths and weaknesses of modernism, they look to its failures and piece together historical pastiche architecture in an attempt to meet the needs of the present. Which is ironic, considering that modernism’s creed was to disregard all architecture that came before it to re-discover the natural forms of building.

On the other hand, I have great respect for what the movement did. It changed the discourse of suburbia and the planned town. No longer was planning a black and white contrast between Levittowns and Unité d’Habitations, but instead planned communities could approach multiple scales and occur both in and outside of cities. In addition it brought a focus back to mixing uses, developing ground floor commercial corridors with residents above and providing mass transit systems.

In recent years, New Urbanism has seen a wax and wane with the tides of fashion. More and more developers are using the New Urbanist Town Center model, but not applying the actual design philosophy to it. While at the same time the newest move by New Urbanists is to co-opt the language of Green Building, because by nature the New Urbanist system is very green friendly (if you disregard that most New Urbanist construction is on Greenfield/virgin sites). In my opinion this is a smart move; New Urbanism is appealing to local planning commissions and if it also helps bring about environmentally friendly design and planning that would be a boon for American Suburbia.

Article: Green Architecture is HOUSES!

This past week, the New York Times ran an interesting article about building green, not just in urban environments, but in suburbia too. The article deals with renovations as well as new construction and outlines some of the trials and tribulations home owners, architects, and builders can face when trying to build “green.”

In light of tuesday being earth day I wanted to take a moment and discuss Green Residential Building (I wouldn’t go so far as to say architecture). Lately we’ve been plagued with ads telling us that all we need to do to save the planet is:

change a lightbulb
drive less
use different soap
insulate our windows
switch to low flow faucets
use cloth bags instead of paper or plastic
etc

But in reality these are just stop gap measures. Yes, they help. Yes, they are better than not doing anything. But without creating a real paradigm shift, that is to say the way we eat, work and live, we will always be playing catchup. Not only do we need to eat foods grown locally, but we also need to eat seasonally and organically. We need to work closer to home and in buildings that do not constantly fight against nature to create ergonomically correct comfort level. Our houses need to not just take less, but also give back.

All of this is applicable the practice of architecture as well. Not only do we need low VOC carpets, but we need to design a space to reduce long term cleaning and wear on said carpets. It is not enough to choose low-E high transmissivity glass with a high diffusion and spread factors but we need to start actively using passive solar design and incorporating operable windows into buildings. White roofs to prevent urban heat islands are great, but green roofs which grow community gardens and have micro wind turbines to supplement building energy use are better. Even better still is to build sheltered into the ground such that there is no roof – only landscape. All of these possibilities are there, and they being debated and practiced on some of the more avant-garde Record Houses and buildings; but until the day that suburban tract houses are situated on their site to take best advantage of solar, wind, geothermal and other natural forces we will constantly be battling against the limits of technology.

The modernists, metabolists, futurists, hi-tech post modernists, et al had it wrong. The essence of the future is not to be found in crystals and made into glittering towers of glass and steel, but rather in the nooks and crannies of the world – the mythic caves of our ancestors – recreated as built landscape just as full of architecture interest and challenge as the glass spire, if not more.

Article: I want a unqiue home, just like everyone else!

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a Chinese one and a Indian one
And a Turkish one and a Korean one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same

— an adaptation of Little Boxes by Malvina Reynolds

Suburbia, the American innovation/scourge, like many other parts of American culture appears to appeal to the rest of the citizens of Planet Earth as much as it does to us. According to an article by ~~the nation’s coloring book~~ USA Today world leaders are looking to the American suburb to learn how to better manager their own growth and development. At first glance this seems to be a cause for concern. American suburbs are not perfect, far from it, they contribute to petroleum consumption, energy waste, land waste, and material waste; but they also allow better air quality, education, an escape from noise and light pollution, and an overall appearance of an better quality of life. Luckily, this dichotomy is why other countries are studying the American model. They are not copying us wholesale, instead they are editing and adjusting our construction and planning methods (or lack thereof) and making them fit into their cultures and in some cases be more “green.” I hope that this learning arrangement mirrors the technology sharing that has happened in the past decades and that we will be able to learn from other countries applications of the suburban mode and adjust our existing suburbs to be more efficient and earth friendly.

Article: Shoot for the stars, land in the gutter

Santiago Calatrava's Original Concept for the Path Station

[Image via Curbed.com]

So it looks like another one of the major Lower Manhattan re-building efforts is facing budget problems. Santiago Calatrava’s path station entrance may be looking at a major value engineering effort in so much that it may be another architect’s rein-visioning of the station, according to an post on Curbed.com. This is bad news for the neighborhood, first the Freedom Tower has yet to start construction (lets not even talk about the deisgn process) then the Fulton Street Transit Hub is looking at ways to work their budget, now this. All of this makes me wonder, has the New York City development community been a victim of the most American of financial flaws – spending beyond their means? Or is this a case of bureaucratic inaction catching up with rising construction costs and inflation? Either way, I think that this is a specter of what is to happening across the board with American projects, I see it in my own office as well. Clients either commission Coach tastes on a Canal Street Budget, or they get massive sticker shock when they see their cost estimate and throw a ton of money into value engineering exercises which end up sucking part of the cost-value of the project away.

So where do we go from here? One of two places, clients need to learn what they can afford and settle for that- which is not likely to happen, or architects need to learn how to better stretch their budgets and keep an eye on the bottom line. The latter seems more reasonable to me. In the current practice of architecture I have yet to know anyone who does their own cost estimating, most firms hire out. Much like catering, its hard to really know where your money’s going and to plan for a budget while designing when someone else does the math. The current architectural work force has to go out of their way (and find a willing management) to learn about project financial and how to plan accordingly. This is a weak point in our profession and can lead to shattered dreams, broken promises, and lots of runny, runny yolk on your face. Much like the port authority has now.

[2017 UPDATE] Calatrava’s station has been built and opened to the public, but the critical reception to it fell along the lines I described previously. This New York Times Article from March 2016 gives an update on the long history of the project and the eventual completed space. The takeaway is that, like the much maligned second avenue subway or the new silver line for the Washington, DC Metro, it seems public architecture and infrastructure is too often slow to fruition and costs too much for the final product.

Article: New New Orleans East

[Dong Phuong Bakery Originally uploaded to Flickr by Ray in New Orleans]

In my fourth year of Tulane I discovered one of the little known great secrets of New Orleans, the vietnamese market in New Orleans East and Dong Phuong Bakery on Chef Menteur Blvd. That first trip, we left the Willow Street Leadership village at 6am; when we got to the market it was just barely light. In that gray dusk, I felt transported unto another place, this was not the New Orleans I knew, nor was it even a part of the US as far as I knew. The sounds and smells were all so different, so alien.

It was a courtyard of a strip mall but it could have been a rural village anywhere, the market is such a universal thing. I bought bunches of fresh cilantro from old withered women who i couldn’t communicate with and stood in line for a fresh Vietnamese po-boy (Bahn Mi), which is by far the best type. By 8 the sun was up and the market was clearing out; we headed over to the bakery where I had my first cha siu bau or siopao and other pastries filled with glutineous meat patties.

I spent the rest of my next two years in the city trying to make it to the market once a month. Usually I got there just as the market was closing. Once I arrived very late, around noon: the strip mall had a small grocer who remained open after the market. The woman there told me in broken english:

You too late, you need get here much early. Some people, they get here for four!

After that, the market became known colloquially as the “for four” market.

After Katrina, I learned of the devastation in New Orleans East and grieved for the loss of the vietnamese community and the market. I feared that this vibrant special part of the city and its culture was lost forever. Now, I have hope that it will return and be brighter than ever, thanks to this article by Pruned, though I fear its authenticity as an organic market will be lost. It will be cleaner and more structured, more “american.” I worry that it will become like the French Market, a simulacra of a market, sanitized and regularized, populated more for the good of tourists and the restaurant industry than to the community that started it. I have to wonder, is it better that something be lost while maintaing authenticity or recreated as a sculpted and crafted creation meant to convey the idea but not the experience?

[2017 UPDATE] Apparently, 12 years after Katrina, the vietnamese farmers market is still going strong. This article from May 2016, discusses the market in greater detail. It seems that while the character of the market has remained the special experience that I remember so fondly, there have been some changes. A local food co-op is working with the community to help with infrastructure and sales. Ideally, this might be the best outcome. The market remains authentic to those who created, sell and shop at it, but is benefitting from the redevelopment of the city without losing its identity.